


Checkerboard

by SaintDeanThomas



Series: The Road To Legacy [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Character Development, Denial of Feelings, Developing Friendships, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3169619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintDeanThomas/pseuds/SaintDeanThomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tucker and Danielle have more in common that either of them realize, and if they're going to survive in Amity Park, they've both got a lot of growing up to do and they're going to need the help of a few of their friends if they want to stay sane while dealing with a sea of challenges, including new faces, new foes... and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Knock On Wood

Danielle had been sick for some time, but she had chosen to seek out help too late. Wandering through the streets of Amity Park while rain pounded against her, Dani coughed as she went from building to building, looking for the familiar light that would illuminate her destination.

"C'mon," she said as she climbed the stairs to the latest building, "please, be right."

Unfortunately, she only had the energy to knock on the door three times before collapsing at the door. Chancing a glance up, she watched as the door opened and a teenaged boy into the light, his face hidden by shadows. "Hiya, cousin." Smiling, Dani managed a weak wave before falling asleep at the feet of the local boy from Amity Park.

Pulling the young half ghost into his home and out of the rain, Tucker Foley shook his head and carried her up the stairs to the guest bedroom. "Great," he said, covering her shivering form in a blanket, "the first time a girl comes to see me in the middle of the night and she's delusional."

Dani woke up to a blurry room and a blurry sandwich to go with it. Throwing the covers off of her, she hopped out of bed and inspected the unfamiliar room as best she could. "This doesn't look anything like Danny's house..."

"That's because you're not  _in_  Danny's house," Tucker said, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he entered the room, "you're in mine."

Startled, Dani turned to the sound of his voice and let loose a shot of ectoplasmic energy that sent Tucker flying against the wall.

"Nothing says thank you like blasting a guy against a wall, huh?"

"Sorry! You caught me by surprise…hey, you're Danny's friend, right? Thomas?"

"Tucker."

"Tucker, right, sorry. Well, sorry to eat and run but I've got things to do. Oh, and thanks for not letting me die out there and all that jazz." Grabbing the sandwich, she began to walk out of the room, however, instead of the doorway, she was met with the solid interference of a wall. "Ow, what the-?"

"Uh, I know I'm not the expert or anything but I'm pretty sure you have to be intangible for that to work."

"I wasn't trying to walk through the wall, smart guy," she said, rubbing her head from the collision, "I was going out the door."

Looking from the door the wall, Tucker shook his head and walked over to the fallen ghost girl. Helping her up, he lead her out the door and down the stairs. "You don't have to walk me out," she protested, "I'm not a dog you know."

"No, but you're apparently sick and you just ran into a wall, and while that's hilarious to me, it's probably not a good sign for you."

As they began to cross the town to get to Fenton Works, Tucker noticed Dani stumble into several things, a scowl plastered on her face the entire time. Finally, after she almost ran out into traffic, Tucker threw himself on top of her to keep her from getting into any more trouble.

"What the heck was that about? Are you blind or something?"

"I- it's… compli-."

"Tucker? Dani?"

Looking up, the tangled teenagers finally took notice of the figure towering over them. Despite the sack of grains and fruits, a hand on her hips and a smile on her face made it was obvious that Samantha Manson had been amused to see the two of them twisted up on the sidewalk. "Am I interrupting something here?"

"Sam! Hi!" Dani said, throwing Tuck off with little effort, "Tucker was just taking me to Danny's house and then, uh, tripped on top of me, yeah that's it!"

"Tripped and saved your half-life." He muttered, adjusting his signature red beret.

"What were you doing with Tuck anyway?"

"…book report."

"But you don't go to school?"

"Independent studies."

Looking around Dani, Sam found Tucker mocking her sad attempt at a cover up. "Riiight. So why didn't you just call Danny to come get her after your "independent studies"?"

"Because I…"  _Didn't think of that "_ …shut up, Manson."

"Umm-hmm…." She said, looking the two of them up and down, "Alright, I see what's going on here. I mean it's cool, I won't judge, you know."

"Judge us for  _what?"_ Tucker asked, eyeing her suspiciously _._

"Oh, Tucker, so naive... so  _clueless_."

Realization dawned on him as he looked between the Sam's smirk and Dani's scowl. "No"

"No what?" Dani asked, lost in the conversation.

"She thinks we're dating."

"Ew, no, we are  ** _not_**  dating!"

"Then what are you two doing."

Tucker was about to explain what had happened, but a quick look at Dani confirmed something he'd been sure of since she mistakenly showed up at his door last night; she was scared. Sam couldn't tell that her questions were causing Dani to panic, but she wore the same look of fear and desperation that he'd noticed on Danny, invisible to most people but plain as day to someone with Tucker's experience. So, as he sighed with exasperation, Tucker took his glasses off and put them on Dani. "Okay you caught us, Dani's with me because she needs glasses but she was embarrassed to talk about it with you guys. You know how Fenton's are with their secrets and general weirdness."

Rolling her eyes, Sam once again focused her attention on Dani. "That's your big secret, glasses, really?"

"Yeap," Dani said, shaking off the momentary confusion, "you caught me. Anyway, we're going to Danny's to show off my new look, catch you later, bye!"

Rushing off before she could say anything else, Dani grabbed Tuck's arm and hurried in the opposite direction, the glasses helping her to see. After a while of walking in silence, a tear formed in her eye and she looked down and whispered, "Back there, how'd you know."

"Because, hello, I'm a techno-geek, if there's two things I know it's computers and how to tell that someone needs glasses."

"It's…it's worse than that actually. I think… I think there's something wrong with me. I think I actually  _am_  going blind."

Stopping in his tracks, Tucker sighed again and turned down a different street, Danielle still holding on tightly to his arm.

"Where are we going" she said, adjusting her newly claimed glasses to make sure she was still seeing correctly, "Fenton Works is the back that way."

"We're going for ice-cream"

"Uh, why?"

"Because," he said, taking out his PDA to send a message to Danny and Sam to meet them at the Nasty Burger later, "I feel like you're gonna need it."

Walking the rest of the way arm in arm, Tucker said nothing as the frightened ghost girl continued to hold onto his arm, and Dani said about as much as she continued down the path, still wearing his glasses. A perfect example of the blind leading the blind.


	2. Serendipity

Walking through the mall with Danny and Jazz in the Amity Park summer had begun giving her a tan, but Danielle only had a minor sense of the temperature. To avoid standing out too much, she’d lost her hoodie in favor of more fitting summer attire, but despite this, she still kept her signature red beanie. The familiar fabric provided a welcome weight on her head, completely dry of sweat despite the scorching heat felt by the others. On the other hand, she was too nervous to about her impending examination to question why she had held onto Tucker's glasses all these months, but now that the time had come to get a new pair, she was certain that she wasn't giving them up.

"Dani," Jazz said, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face, "its ninety-eight degrees out here, why on earth are you still wearing that thing?"

"I guess the heat doesn't bother us as much as it does normal people anymore," Danny answered, shoving his hands in his pockets as they continued into the mall, "besides, you should be glad to be considered the ‘hot’ one for once, Jazz.”

"Ouch," Danielle laughed, "plus, my look is iconic, and who am I to mess with that too much?"

“Mmmhmm, I still think you’re using just your beanie as a familiarity crutch in an unfamiliar situation? I can only imagine how hard it can be for people who’ve been in your position to properly adjust to-.”

“Danny she’s doing it again”

“Remember what I taught, you, just walk away and pretend you don’t know her.”

“Done.”

Breaking off from them, Danielle entered the optometrist's office as her pseudo-siblings split up after agreeing to meet back at Elmer's Pharmacy once they were done. Clutching tight to the black-rimmed glasses she was carrying, she entered the room and waited patiently to hear what she already knew. Back when she'd first realized that she was losing her sight, Dani had been traveling around the world looking for a steady solution. After a few weeks of eating mostly carrots and using her powers to forge signatures on optometrist appointments, she had finally decided it was time to reach out to her contacts in Amity Park. Sure, they were a bit skeptical of her at first, but if she’d been put in their position she probably would have reacted the same way.

 _Danny says the ecto-dejecto’s worked in the past for stabilizing you,_ Jazz had told her while she and Danny looked over her in the Fenton’s lab, _but you might wanna start doing daily injections, otherwise your eyesight may continue to get worse. Worst case scenario, you should be able to get by on glasses for the next few years._

Now, as she sat in the doctor's office waiting and thumbing the edge of Tucker’s old glasses, she realized just how short "a few years" could be.

“Danielle?” The assistant called, snapping her out of her thoughts, “we’re ready for you.” To the doctor’s credit, she didn't really seem too bothered when Dani asked to keep her old frames to just get new lenses, and even though the paint had begun to come off from her adventures around the country, Danielle still wore them faithfully.

"Can I ask what's so special about these that you don't want to give them up?"

Instinctively, she thought back to the last- and least pleasant- conversation she’d had with the person she’d gotten them from:

* * *

 

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she’d asked, poking her head through Danny’s bedroom floor.

Startled, Tucker fell out of his chair, landing on the hard floor of Danny’s bedroom. “Stop doing that to me,” he yelled at the head poking up from the ground, “there are doors for a reason, Dani!”

“Soo-rry, jeez.” Drifting onto the bed, Dani grabbed Danny’s controller and started pressing buttons. “But don’t change the subject, every time I’m over here and you come to hang out, you never talk to me and generally just ignore me, why? The only time you didn’t act like a jerk around me was when you gave me these glasses.”

Pausing the game, Tucker glared at Danielle and shook his head. “You needed help, so I helped. But Danny’s the one that actually trusts you, alright, not me, every time you come around her Vlad’s not far behind.”

“Hey,” she said, indignantly tossing down the controller, “I already admitted that I made a mistake trusting dad,”

“You mean Vlad?”

“That’s what I said! Anyway, I messed up, I’m young, sue me.”

“Believe me, if I could sue, I would,” he said, “but as it stands, I’ll have to do with avoiding you until you leave again”

“Fine then,” she said as she stormed off, “your loss, dick.”

 _I’ll show him_ , she thought, _he’s wrong about me, I know it._

* * *

 

"They just…I’m trying to prove a point, so like… they matter, okay?"

Deciding not to push, the doctor simply went along with her wishes, fitting the stronger lenses into the metal frame that Dani had received when she first got back to Amity Park.

Waiting patiently in a booth inside the pharmacy, Dani found herself playing with her ice-cream, phasing her spoon in and out without actually breaking the surface of it. After a few minutes, Danny and Jazz finally arrived, and arm full of bags between them.

"So," Jazz asked, sliding into the seat beside Dani, "how're the new glasses treating you?"

"Well, I haven't run into any walls today, so there's that," she said, finally taking a spoonful of ice-cream into her mouth, "anyway, I just have to get used to the new lenses, the frames are from my old glasses."

"You mean that beat-up old pair that Tucker gave you?"

"If you choose to call them that, sure."

"So," Jazz began, her chin now resting in her palm as she examined Dani, "any particular reason you chose to keep those?"

"They're just sort of…special to me."

"Go on…"

"It's like…y'know… and they're just…like, yeah…so it's…y'know?"

"Well,” Danny responded, stealing a bite of her ice cream, “I for one totally understood that and am one hundred percent satisfied with that answer."

"Sarcasm isn't cute, Daniel." Dani said, flinging her spoon at her older brother.

Catching the ice cream in his mouth, Danny smiled. "Everything I do is cute," he said, "you look like just me so you of all people should know that”

As the three of them shared a laugh, Danielle found herself stirring a spoon around an empty glass, the faintest traces of a smile decorating her face. "Alright, you've put me in a good mood, so I'll let you guys in on a secret; I'm used to be what some people would call a…'nomadic goods-lifter'."

"You mean you used to steal on the go," Jazz said, "not surprising really. But I’m not judging, you did what you had to survive."

"Right. I've been all over the world, Italy, Jamaica, Canada, Cairo, Japan, but at the end of the day, it's always come down to a 'gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat' situation. Lotta homeless kids out there and not a lot of people willing to lend a helping hand. But, these glasses…they're the first thing anyone's actually given me without an hidden agenda. Tuck didn't give me these because he had to or because he wanted me to use my powers for him in some way, he did it 'cus he saw I was in trouble and decided to help me. Sure they're just a temporary fix, but to someone like me, that… well, that means a lot. I mean, it's no new car or anything, but it's still nice to know that he cared enough to help when I needed someone, even if he did turn into a massive suspicious dick like, immediately after."

Letting Jazz and Danny soak in her logic, Dani once again began playing with her spoon, this time levitating it and making it dance in the air before catching it in her mouth. "Anyway, I should be getting to work now," she said,  pushing herself out of the booth, "I don’t think it’ll look good if I'm late on my first day."

"Wait, since when do you have a job,” Danny asked, the slightest bit of envy tinting his voice, “I don’t even have a job yet?!”

"Since about ten minutes ago, I asked Elmer if he needed any help around here since I think I’m gonna have to be in town a while and he said sure, so I’m gonna go do that I guess. Plus, I’ve stolen like… a lot of stuff over the last year, so maybe it’ll be good for me to do honest work for a living."

“Wow, I’m very impressed with your maturity, Dani,” Jazz beamed, pulling her into a hug, “if it weren’t for the weird ghost powers, I’d almost believe you were a clone of me instead of Danny.”

“Rude,” Danny scoffed, “so rude”

Waving to the two of them as they left, Dani smiled and put on a uniform to get ready for work, the bright pink of the apron highlighting the cool blue of her eyes behind the glasses and the faint line of freckles that'd begun to appear across her nose from the summer sun. As she turned to begin her shift, she noticed two figures walking towards her, too engrossed in conversation to notice her half-smiling at them as the job dictated. One was built like a linebacker, with Korean features and rocking a cross between a bowl cut and a fade, and the other, was Tucker, his carefree smile a welcome change to the scowl she’d last seen on him beneath his deep red beret.

“Dude, either I’m having a heat stroke or that’s Fenton behind the counter… but like, we just passed him?”

“Kwan, that’s rid-” Tucker stopped as his smile faltering slightly, “Danielle, what are you doing here?”

“Working,” she said, switching to the welcoming voice she used when conning food to bury her residual annoyance with him “would you like to try our new Banana Berry Blitz? It’s only here for the summer”

“Can’t,” Kwan said, pulling out a fistful of dollars and slapping them into her hand, “allergic to bananas, but just give us as many vanilla milkshakes as we can get with this, I’m gonna go get us a table.”

Slapping Tucker hard on the back, Kwan sauntered away towards the tables, his carefree personality seeming to infect everyone he walked by.

“So,” Dani began, “what’s the deal with you and sunshine over there.”

“Summer tutoring,” Tucker responded, leaning on the counter as he waited for their order “turns out he’s not such a bad dude outside of school, but his parents were a little worried about his graduating so they hired me.”

“Mhhm, and are you sure you can trust them, I mean, who knows, they might be plotting against you guys too.”

Wincing at the memory of their last encounter, Tucker repositioned himself to face Danielle. “Look, about that, I may have been a little too harsh on you.”

“Go on.”

“Honestly, you make me kind of nervous, but like… not like any other ghost, but it’s more that I feel ...off around you, but I think that’s on me; Danny vouches for you, Valerie doesn’t shoot you on sight and even Sam likes you- in her own weird Sam way- so you can’t be all bad.”

“Thanks,” she said, rolling her eyes as she handed him his order, “glad to see you aren’t a total fudge-bar. But next time, try having a conversation with me before writing me off.”

“Fudge-bar?”

“Not a whole one, about fifty percent.”

“Fair enough,” he said, walking away from the counter, “anyway, like I was saying, sorry about being a 'fudge-bar', and who knows maybe we’ll even be friends if you stick around… nice glasses by the way.”

“Yeah,” Danielle whispered, flashing Tucker a half smile as she watched him carry the trays of drinks to the table where Kwan was waiting, “I guess they are pretty nice after all.”


End file.
